


Thirst of you

by migraine_Sky



Category: Skyfall (2012) - Fandom
Genre: F/M, Hallucinations, Hong Kong, Hungry Ghost Festival, Madness, Mindfuck, Other, Pre-Skyfall, Self-cest, or ghosts?
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-07-01
Updated: 2015-07-01
Packaged: 2018-04-07 04:55:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,757
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4250178
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/migraine_Sky/pseuds/migraine_Sky
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It’s highly unlikely that anyone would claim Raoul Silva to be a completely sane man. But what if his madness didn’t begin after betrayal and tortures?<br/>1997, Hong Kong. Something like a study of Tiago’s life before the Handover.</p><p> </p><p>  <img/></p><p>Soundtrack: http://8tracks.com/migraine_sky/thirst-of-you</p>
            </blockquote>





	Thirst of you

It was getting darker, and on the sidewalk underneath the blocks of high-rise featureless buildings fires were burning.

Tiago watched through the window of a slow moving car the blazing piles of colored fake banknotes and people scurrying between the fires. The Ghost Festival came this year at the beginning of July and the sickly-sweet smell of incense hung heavily in the sultry air.

“If I were a ghost, I would be offended by the attempts to bribe me with fake money,” Tiago said scornfully to his partner Lee.

The partner was British of Chinese descent. He spoke English just as well as he spoke Chinese, without a slightest accent, and Tiago was jealous of that. At least Lee didn’t know a thing about programming.

“Don’t put yourself into ghost’s shoes” answered Lee lazily. “They don’t like that.”

“Oh, speaking of things _I_ don’t like. We still didn’t manage to get the coffee, let’s stop at that little shop, you know, on the street next to ours,” said Rodriguez, rubbing his neck and stretching to distract himself from the sleepy stupor, evoked by dancing flames and curling smoke of incense.

“That shop is closed for the festival. Many shops close so that the streets were clear of any passers-by, and spirits could move freely.”

“Right… As if people can stand in the way of spirits,” snorted Rodriguez.

Suddenly he stiffened, his dark eyes staring into the rearview mirror.

“Him again,” muttered the agent and Lee threw a glance at the mirror but it was adjusted for Tiago’s convenience. “Don’t turn around. It’s the third time this week – is that enough to convince you that he is following us?”

“Are you sure that this is one and the same person?”

“Of course, I'm sure. Not only is he a _gwai lo_ * but also quite recognizably blond.”

“Or maybe he’s just a ghost*?” Lee grinned but Rodriguez did not appreciate the joke.

The man on the sidewalk stood motionless, holding in his hand a burning banknote. Perhaps, he was smiling; it was hard to tell for sure, with his features obscured by the twilight.

Tiago snapped and turned his head around, but the man disappeared behind a building, as the car turned into a lane.

 

When Rodriguez came to Hong Kong, he knew next to nothing about it. But plunging into the pulsating energy of this place, so different from all the cities he had seen before, he instantly felt the rhythm, merged with the flow. Soon he found Hong Kong to be very similar to himself. A city at the crossroads of cultures, that had forgotten (or wished to forget) its roots in the relentless pursuit of success and money. It was changing constantly because it didn’t value the old and was always ready to destroy the past in order to replace it with something new and shiny.

A city that was never tired though it never slept.

A city that was never satisfied.

When Rodriguez was sent to meet his new partner on Kowloon waterfront, the first thing Lee asked him was: "Look over there - what do you see?" Tiago looked at the tall skyscrapers glowing across the bay, not sure what he should be looking at, so Lee answered for him: "Fifty thousand Chinese. And each of them hates your gut." Rodriguez sneered.

Hatred was easy. Familiar.

He could work with that.

 

But his work that was so exciting during the first year soon turned into a routine. Every morning was a morning of a working day, weekend didn’t exist for Tiago. The ‘mornings’ began at different time - depending on at what hour Tiago had the luck to go to bed - and often didn’t match the astronomical term. It was surprising that this chaos could become a routine as well.

If he woke up in his apartment that he shared with Lee, the first thing he usually did was turn on the air dryer (which he had to turn off for the night not to overload the electricity network that was already burdened by two powerful computers and an air conditioner). After that - a refreshing shower and a cup of pretty shitty (to which Tiago also managed to get used to) coffee.

Once a week Rodriguez held classes on programming for beginners. It was his cover and something of a hobby. The classes were sponsored by the Hong Kong Government and therefore attended mostly by Chinese. At the Headquarters it was decided that this will also help the agent to become better acquainted with the local people and their customs; but Tiago didn’t communicate much with his students, his patience being barely enough to answer a couple of stupid (in his opinion) questions during the class.

 

It was Thursday, and Rodriguez was standing by the entrance of the skyscraper where the courses were held, waiting for Lee. His own car was, unfortunately, in repair; and he didn’t want to call a taxi or use the subway - now that he was sure that he was being watched.

“You know, I hate the subway during the rainy season,” he explained it to Lee on the phone. “The rush hour lasts all day, and for some reason all the people are attempting to press their wet umbrellas to _me_. To be fair, it’s not much better in the streets… That's when your above-average height can be a problem. I have to constantly make sure that noone tries to poke my eye with an umbrella, dammit!”

The last words he said deliberately loud after some girl that walked by almost scratched his cheek with an umbrella rib tip.

Narrow sidewalks made it really noticeable how _minimal_ Hong Kong was. Minimal, compact, cramped. Architects invented minimalism to help create a utopia, but, in fact, they created hell. People and traffic were swiping by in one continuous flow, a neon sign of a bar monotonously buzzed over Tiago’s head. He looked at his watch: Lee was half a minute late. Another minute and a half, and he would start worrying.

Exactly in one minute and a half a silver Nissan slowed down by the roadside. Tiago opened the driver's door, gesturing for Lee to move from his place behind the wheel: this part of town Rodriguez knew better. They were going to an important meeting and he didn’t want to get lost somewhere in the alleyways.

Tiago hoped to make it until the last moment when the traffic light turned red.He hit the brakes only when the car was already on a pedestrian crossing, standing in the way of the crowd that gushed violently onto the road. As if in front of an aquarium the agent watched the stream of people flow past the car when suddenly a familiar figure flashed behind the windshield.

“Did you see him?! There, tan jacket, peroxided hair!”

“Who? Where?”

Rodriguez unbuckled his seat belt furiously, opened the door and jumped out of the car. The traffic light went green, and the cars behind honked impatiently.

“Where are you going, we have a meeting!” called out his partner, nevertheless already climbing into the driver's seat.

“You talk to them, I’ll call!” Tiago rushed to the sidewalk almost getting hit by a taxi.

He saw the stranger straight ahead, towering in the crowd. It wasn’t the first time when Rodriguez thought that the man’s appearance was really inappropriate for a spy: he stood out like a white crow. The man turned his head around slightly and must have noticed Rodriguez – he rushed into a nearby alley, pushing people out of his way. Tiago followed him, squeezing between pedestrians and souvenir shops, that expanded onto the sidewalk, where iron busts of Mao Zedong stood alongside with badly painted porcelain Buddhas and plastic ‘lucky cats’. The man turned again, but Tiago didn’t lose him, passing several wheeled food stalls and slipping under the bamboo scaffolding along some construction site. The blond changed the street once again, but Tiago noticed how he sneaked into a building that the agent happened to visit quite often.

The sign above the entrance read "Chungking Mansions"*; but this place didn’t resemble a mansion at all. It was built as a residential block but now presented a rather dilapidated complex consisting of five seventeen-storey buildings, that was stuffed with all sorts of motels and hostels, shops and restaurants, underground factories and questionable clinics. This could well be the most international place in the world - Chinese migrant workers from the mainland and Indonesian prostitutes, Pakistani traders, Nepalese drug dealers and tourists from all corners of the earth, looking for the cheapest motels in Hong Kong. Here you could find anything - especially if it was illegal - and Tiago would often visit this place for work (or leisure).

The Mansions met him with familiar roar of the crowd that sounded like the roar of a distant waterfall. The blonde immediately disappeared from view, rushing into the building’s bowels; but Rodriguez knew he must have ran to the stairs that were not so easily found - he always used it himself, as you often could wait for the elevator for half an hour. Tiago slipped past three exchange offices, stands with mobile phones, pirated cassettes and counterfeit sneakers, and pushed the metal door to the stairwell with his shoulder. Following the hollow sound of quickly retreating footsteps, that echoed from the gray walls, covered in wires and pipes like lianas, Tiago ran up, gasping for humid air. The echo of the steps died out; Rodriguez passed another flight of stairs and saw the door leading to the tenth floor (the hieroglyph for number "10" was easy to remember*) closing slowly. He jumped into the door and caught a glimpse of white hair flashing at the end of a long corridor. Tiago ran down the hall, turned to the left, almost knocked over a big woman in a bright sari, crashed into two Pakistanis, who were sorting out shoeboxes, and barely noticed how the blonde disappeared behind the door that read "Angel Guest House".

No one sat behind the tiny reception desk, and Rodriguez quickly walked into the inner corridor of the guest house – just in time to see one of the door being shut in a hurry. Bursting into the room, however, he came face to face not with the blond stranger, but with a startled Chinese woman.

“Where is he?!” Tiago gasped, trying to catch his breath.

The girl just stared at him in bewilderment. Tiago pushed her out of the way and hurriedly slipped along the corridor, that was very narrow, but never-the-less accommodated a closet, a refrigerator and some cloth bales, stacked on one another. He peeped into a room (no windows, packed full of things) then into the kitchen (a grid on the window, disgusting sour smell of vinegar).

“The blonde who ran into here, where is he?!” in just three steps he was back into the first room, ignoring the faint murmur "I don’t know" of the scared woman, who recoiled on the floor against a wall.

He squeezed between a narrow bunk bed (it wasn’t possible to hide under it, not enough space) and the wall, looked out the window. Behind the window there was a gloomy well of tall walls, circling a tiny backyard. _‘Did he use these rusty drainpipes to climb into some other window? Fucking rat!’_ He pressed his fists angrily into the old crumbling concrete sill for a moment, then darted back past the bed.

This room was too tiny, too cramped, with verticals of closets and boxes – Hong Kong in miniature, as if a smaller model of the city itself. It started to seem that he was looking into a rotating pit of fractals, Hong Kong inside Hong Kong inside Hong Kong, a conglomeration of cardboard boxes and boxes of prefabricated houses, closing in on him from all sides. He furiously pushed at the nearest cardboard tower, throwing all the boxes to the floor and shouted "Where the fuck is he?!", suffocating, feeling powerless and absurd as clumsy rubber monsters that destroyed fake cities in old kaiju movies.

The girl just shook her head, not daring to repeat her "I don’t know," pressing closer to the wall, her black eyes filled with horror.

Tiago took a deep breath, rubbed his face fiercely. It became very quiet, and he could hear the canary in the kitchen jumping on its perch and whistling anxiously, there, in its cage on the dirty fridge next to a Buddha raising his hands towards heaven.

_‘What am I doing, what the hell am I doing, could mamá be actually right, did I start to lose it?’_

He quickly stepped to the girl, causing her to flinch, and squatted down beside her.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t want to scare you, shhh, it’s all right...”

This sudden change of his tone didn’t seem to comfort her, she continued to stare at him with the eyes of a hunted animal, pressing into the wall. She is way too timid for a prostitute, absently thought Tiago. _Stop, a prostitute? Why did he think so?_ Ah yes, the hieroglyph he saw on her wrist. The girl gasped but didn’t try to protest when Rodriguez gently took her hands, turning them to see the wrists. There was a small bluish tattoo on the right one, but Tiago’s attention immediately switched to the other wrist. It was an inflamed mess, may be a burn, covered in curdled crust, the skin around it red and swollen. It could be an unfortunate tattoo removal, with the tattoos probably covering both wrists.

“ _Ufff_ , it doesn’t look good, you know. You need to see the doctor urgently, you know that? I had a friend who lost his whole arm in a similar way. What's your name?”

She was still silent, looking at him as if in a daze.

“Do you speak English? What's your name? _Nay gew mut-yeh mayng ah_?

The girl blinked, as if bringing herself out of a trance, swallowed hard and finally said “Sévérine. My name is Sévérine. I speak English.”

“Nice to meet you, Sévérine. I’m Tiago.”

He wasn’t surprised to hear this not-really-Chinese name: he was long familiar with inexplicable Hongkongese passion for European names, mostly extravagant ones. Besides, looking at her face closely, he saw that she must be of mixed-race; European features were, in fact, dominant on her face, but it wasn’t that easy to spot because of the heavy makeup.

“Sévérine, did you see a man run into your room? Blond  _gwai lo_ , about my height?”

Despite the soft tone, she shook her head vigorously and answered, stammering “N-no, I didn’t see anyone!”

Tiago sighed, soothingly rubbing her hand, he was still holding. Maybe she really told him the truth; apparently, he scared her enough.

“Show your wrist to a doctor, Sévérine.”  
Rodriguez knew that she most likely couldn’t afford one. He smiled fleetingly, reaching into his inner pocket for a bundle of banknotes. In his world almost nothing bound people together like money did. And he had to try not to lose this link, albeit a ghostlike, but still leading to the blonde.

“Here you go,” he handed her a rather generous sum. “But for God's sake, don’t go to that hellhole on the eighth floor, find a real clinic.”

He put the money in her hand, and she looked helplessly at the colored notes, as if not understanding what that was.

“And this is my number,” Rodriguez added a business card of some questionable motel, ‘approved by the Hong Kong government’ over which he has written his number and name in large characters. “Call me if you see this blonde again. You’ll recognize him right away, he would be somewhat similar to me if I went crazy or became, say, a Chinese pop star. This blonde... he stole my wallet. I don’t know why such a respectable-looking man is stealing wallets, but everyone has a hobby. And it wouldn’t be a problem – as you have seen, I keep the money in my pocket – but for a photo of my mother, the only photo I have left of her. So it is very important to me to find that person, you see?”

Pleased with his own explanation, Tiago smiled at the girl, stood up and walked towards the door. He had a link now.

×××  
  
  
  
_*_ _gwai lo_ \- Cantonese slang term for foreigners.  
* Literally " _gwai lo_ " - "ghost man" (because of the pale skin of Europeans).  
* Residential Complex Chungking.  
Wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chungking_Mansions  
* Character "10" looks like «十».


End file.
